Tuesday, December 8, 2015

FINLAND: Iiro Rantala -My Working Class Hero(ACT 2015)


My Working Class Hero 

A jazz tribute to John Lennon. With his solo piano versions of the music of John Lennon and The Beatles, the Finnish pianist Iiro Rantala succeeds in preserving the soul of these timeless, immortal songs while at the same time adding something totally new to them.
A homage to John LennonJohn Lennon would have been seventy-five on October 9th 2015. On “My Working Class Hero,” the Finnish pianist Iiro Rantala pays tribute to this master of modern song.Rantala has demonstrated a particular gift for making this kind of homage once before. His 2011 album “Lost Heroes” recaptured the spirit of a different musical idol in each of its ten songs, and received the annual prize of the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik and an ECHO jazz award, whilst Germany's foremost broadsheet newspaper the FAZ proclaimed it as having “intelligence, humour, loads of feeling, unpredictable ideas and especially finely crafted piano playing.”In this new John Lennon tribute, Rantala turns to the musician who is perhaps greatest of all of his ‘lost heroes’. “I heard John Lennon before I knew anything about jazz” says Rantala, “’Hap...
ACT